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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24520621">winter has come, and winter has gone</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/noteworthyrhubarbplants/pseuds/noteworthyrhubarbplants'>noteworthyrhubarbplants</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire &amp; Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Post-Season/Series 08, like the actual long night not the show version, live love laugh except for everyone who died, myrcella and tommen deserved better tbh, the long night is over</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:27:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,262</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24520621</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/noteworthyrhubarbplants/pseuds/noteworthyrhubarbplants</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“It was worlds away,” she whispers to her son, standing amongst the old sentinels and oaks and ironwoods. “We were naive, we were young like you. I’ll tell you, someday, about your uncle, who I loved so dearly. I’ll tell you about your father, how far he fell and how far he rose. I’ll tell you about the Long Night that we fought, so that you will remember what we lived through, what we survived.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Harrion Karstark/Sansa Stark, Myrcella Baratheon &amp; Tommen Baratheon, Myrcella Baratheon/Bran Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>winter has come, and winter has gone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Winterfell, 308 AC</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The babe is born as the snows start to melt - a spring child, a child who will grow up in the warm days of summer. Someday he will rule over the North, in the kingdom his family has fought so hard to keep for him. Myrcella puts her palm to his head of copper-coloured curls, and thinks herself blessed indeed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What will you call him?” her husband asks her. His hand is in hers, the other stroking back the damp tendrils of fair hair that cling to her cheeks. A massive direwolf rests at her side, head on her legs, as affectionate as a puppy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t you have a name?” Myrcella asks him in some surprise. “I had not thought of one.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s your child too,” Bran says. The time is long past when Hodor would carry him through Winterfell’s halls - Bran sits by her bedside in a chair that has wheels, and if not the husband that many women dream of, he is the only king that the North will recognise, the eldest surviving son of Eddard Stark. Myrcella cherishes every part of him, including his brokenness. His voice is low, gentle when he speaks to her, his eyes affixed to her and their son. “Just as much as he’s mine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then I want to call him Tommen,” she says decidedly. “I think that my brother would have liked that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she is well enough to leave her confinement, Myrcella takes Tommen to the godswood to be acknowledged by his father in the sights of the old gods. It is a year past since she was married before the same weirwood, and she is a woman of eight and ten now, the customs of the north not so strange to her as they once were, when she was but a southron princess visiting Winterfell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was worlds away,” she whispers to her son, standing amongst the old sentinels and oaks and ironwoods. “We were naive, we were young like you. I’ll tell you, someday, about your uncle, who I loved so dearly. I’ll tell you about your father, how far he fell and how far he rose. I’ll tell you about the Long Night that we fought, so that you will remember what we lived through, what we survived.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The year is a spring in truth. “I believe it will hold this time, your Grace,” Sansa says to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Myrcella first knew her, Sansa was just a girl, enamoured with the glamour of the royal party in Winterfell, passionately in love with Joff, golden prince that he had been. This Sansa is a woman in truth, refined like a sword in the coldest parts of the winter. She married Harry Karstark amidst the blizzards that followed the Others from the lands beyond the wall, and she put a dragonglass dagger in the heart of the first wight that breached the Great Keep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have lived through this one,” Arya is saying. “We can live through many more.” Arya is not as changed as her sister. A fierce, wild little girl, grown into a loyal, fearless woman, but wrought stronger, just as they all have been, by the years on her own, in the Riverlands and then in the Free Cities, and then through the decade of the Long Night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sansa shakes her head. “We can,” she says. “But this is not another False Spring. And I think the peace will last with it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Myrcella prays for it. The war has been waged throughout the long years of this winter, all for the belief that eventually, spring will come for them. And the Others are vanquished now, at the cost of the millions who have not lived through the darkest days of the war. The son and sister of Rhaegar Targaryen rule together from the Iron Throne, the last surviving dragons at their side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is a beautiful year - Myrcella has never seen the north so beautiful, the first buds of green in the godswood, the first flowers blooming in the Winterfell gardens. When she first lived here she was fresh from the southron courts and she had hated the cold, cried every night for her mother and her brother. Winter has changed her with them all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The roads thaw, and the people who have survived in Winterfell throughout the winter begin to leave it. The last of the Targaryen army returns to the south. Sansa goes back to Karhold with her husband and her daughter. Little Catelyn Karstark bids a reluctant goodbye to the babe in Myrcella’s arms, and begs to be allowed to come for visits. Jon travels north to the Wall, to see the Night’s Watch disbanded and the wildlings restored to their lands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gendry Waters returns south, newly legitimized by the king and made Lord of Storm’s End. Their relationship is confused - most of the Seven Kingdoms believe Myrcella bastard-born, and so all at once Gendry is her half brother and not her half brother. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think you’ll rule well over Storm’s End,” she says to him tentatively. “And I think you’ll be a better lord to them than Uncle Renly or Father were.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He smiles at her, occupied with the saddle of his horse. “I’m new to it,” he says. “But I’ll try my best to do right by them. Arya’ll be ready to tell me the minute I’m doing something wrong.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Arya?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Arya’s leading another horse into the yard, waving off the stableboy who’s trying to help her. In breeches and cloak with her sword at her hip, she looks as boyish as ever, yet Gendry gazes at her like a man in love. “She’s going to come south with me,” he says quietly. “She doesn’t know if she’ll stop at Storm’s End - she’s made me no promises, but I’ll hope anyhow.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>      ***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But these days are not without their own mourning; what they had no time to do in the winter, where days were lived moment to moment and nothing was so important as survival, in the spring her losses remember themselves in Myrcella’s heart, buried deep within her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Myrcella,” Bran says to her softly one evening. “I know you’re not happy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows her as well as she knows herself, and even better occasionally. Myrcella thinks of the homesickness when she was first fostered in Winterfell, betrothed to a little boy she hardly knew. Cersei Lannister had been as enraged as Myrcella had ever seen her, but Lord Arryn and Robert Baratheon and Lord Stark had brokered the match between them, and not even a fall from a broken tower had been able to dissolve it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I won’t let him! I won’t let him bury her here, with a cripple for a husband! He must be </span>
  <em>
    <span>mad</span>
  </em>
  <span>, selling my only daughter to a second son -”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you’re patient she’ll be home in a few years. He won’t be a husband to her, the boy might never wake -”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her uncle Jaime had a placating hand out, wary of her mother’s temper, but Myrcella had barely flinched when the queen threw her goblet of wine. It had done no good - when the royal train took their leave of Winterfell, Sansa and Arya Stark went south with their father, and Myrcella was left in Winterfell with the broken boy they said would never walk again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had all of her mother’s beauty, people told her, but only a little of her nature - despite this, her parting with her brothers had been an embittered one. She and Tommen had wept over each other, clinging together until Tommen’s septa gently but firmly pried them apart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joff, regarding this farewell with nothing short of contempt, had embraced her and then said, leadingly, “and who d’you think our lord father will betroth you to next?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d gazed at him, bewildered. “What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When he can’t get a child on you,” Joff clarified. He was smirking, as if he had a joke that she was not a part of. “He’s a lame now - all lames are unmanned, everybody knows that. They won’t want you here, barren and useless. Perhaps Father’ll marry you off to a hedge knight, just to be rid of you. Or you could be the wife of old Lord Frey.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Myrcella was uncertain of matters of the bedchamber between a man and wife, which seemed to result in children, unsure of what Joff was implying. However she was more intelligent than Tommen, and knew he was mocking her - and not only her, but Bran, unconscious and defenceless. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He caught her wrist as she raised her hand to slap him, his eyes widened in surprise. Tommen’s septa was gasping like a fish. “You can freeze here then,” he’d spat. “And your precious cripple.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Joff’s dead now, will never pinch her again, nor pull her hair or tell her nasty things until she’s covering her ears and running to their mother. And he was wrong. Myrcella looks at Bran now, head to toe in grey and white, every inch a lord, belonging here in a way that a Lannister never will, and she tries not to resent him for it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they have grown together, loved each other, depended on each other. They had been children while the Lannisters and the Starks were warring in the south, when the War of the Five Kings raged and she became a hostage of the Starks and he a crippled prince, when Theon Greyjoy captured Winterfell and Bran and Rickon became hostages as well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They had escaped in the middle of the night with Hodor and the wildling woman, to hide down in the crypts. When they emerged at last, Winterfell was in ruins, deserted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My lady mother will have Joff send an army for us,” she’d promised Bran as they fled, to the Wall where Eddard Stark’s bastard was Lord Commander. “She’ll have Ser Arys come north to save me. He’s my sworn shield, he has to protect me. I will ask him to take you to your brother.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bran had been doubtful, even then. It was naivety, Myrcella knows that now, a childishness that kept her hopeful as they struggled through the wolfswood, searching for help from any quarter. Forgiveness never came easily to Joff, and any would-be rescuer’s path was hampered by the armies of a dozen hopeful kings rampaging south of the Neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time they reached Castle Black they were half frozen, nearly dead of exhaustion. Myrcella’s grandfather and Joff were dead - the North now belonged to the Boltons, turned cloak and murdered Bran’s brother and the host of Northmen that had ridden south. From the Wall to Dorne, men muttered of Myrcella and her brothers, and named them bastards.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon Snow had defeated Ramsay Bolton and retaken Winterfell before Myrcella had at last realised that there was no Lannister army coming to rescue her. The Targaryens and their dragons were landing on Dragonstone, such as they had landed there three hundred years earlier - Cersei Lannister sent her armies against them, not for the daughter she had loved so long ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been her uncle who sent the raven to tell her of her mother’s death, Myrcella’s little Uncle Tyrion whom she had adored so as a girl. He’s the Hand of the Targaryen king now, but still Lannister in this new world where Lannisters are hated, just as she is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They said Bran was a fool to marry her - that she was Lannister whelp, and worse that she was a bastard, born of the sin of her mother. There were dozens of Northern daughters, Northern widows, women who belonged in the snow and ice who he could have married and made queen, but he chose Myrcella, living off the goodwill of the Starks because she had nowhere else to go. And like a miracle, like a gift from the old gods themselves, she had felt the quickening of a child within her belly, just three moons from her wedding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Summer gets up from the fireside, stretching massive front paws, and pads over to where Myrcella is sitting. Tommen is curled up in her lap, fast asleep - already he’s a fine, big child crawling through the corridors of the Great Keep until he wears holes in his baby gowns.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re allowed to grieve,” Bran says to her. “I would not deny you that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am the only woman in the Seven Kingdoms who does,” Myrcella whispers. Her hands go to Tommen’s warm head, anxiously combing her fingers through the bright curls. “And it’s too late. My uncle said she whispered my name after she drank the essence of nightshade, but we were lost to each other, from the moment my father made her leave me in the North.”</span>
</p><p><span>When she cries, she feels the babe stir in her lap, and she gathers him up in her arms and holds him close. “I won’t mourn her,” she says, suddenly angry. “I hate her. She left me, she never</span> <span>came back for me. She loved Joff the best of all of us, and when he was dead she only wanted vengeance. Tommen died, and it was all her fault.”</span></p><p>
  <span>Bran says nothing. He cannot rise out of his seat to hold her, but she feels his hand on hers, light as feathers. Her Tommen burrows into her arms, and she embraces him tighter, wishing she could shed everything that is still Lannister about her until she is a Stark and Queen in the North in truth, everything dark and painful about her past left in it.</span>
</p>
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